Ideas, strategies and projects that give rise to pilot projects. They tackle the challenges raised by the stakeholders involved and which are found in particular places in Barcelona or Medellín.
Leaseholds are a form of property holding halfway between buying and renting. Tenants buy a 75-year lease on a property freehold which continues to be owned by the City Council.
This allows several advantages, such as more affordable payments that are similar in price to social housing rent and are only paid for the first 30 years, giving the lessee full stability and guarantee of use for the 75 years of the lease's duration, with no rent renewal or variations.
The City Council also promises to buy back the flat's lease if the property is returned within the first fifteen years of the lease, thus enabling lessees to recoup part of their investment.
Barcelona has 630 such flats already completed, distributed along several districts (Sants Montjuic, Ciutat Vella, Nou Barris and Sant Martí). A further 106 are under construction in Sants Montjuic and Sant Martí and as many 280 more are in the planning stage in Sant Martí, Ciutat Vella and Sarrià-Sant Gervasi.
are currently social rented housing.
And finally, individual owners are being encouraged to hand their empty flats over to the City Council for social rented housing. This initiative is being carried out by the Third Sector Round Table.
Barcelona's stock of Social Rented Housing consists of 10,426 flats. This stock has gone up by 4% over the last four years. But the most important growth was seen in the flats in this stock that are intended for social rented housing, in other words, where their tenants pay no more than 30% of their income. We have seen a rise in the number of such social housing flats over the four years, from 1,140 to 2,300, representing a 102% growth.
